We should be trying to entice families to stay in Auburn, not scare them into neighboring townships.

That's exactly what the newest budget proposal has people talking about. It sounds great when you see property taxes going down, but when you start to unravel the pieces, you see clearly it's just another way to open the door to more taxation.

Take, for example, our never-ending water rate increases.

Each and every budget includes a raise in the cost of water.

In addition, our local government wants to raise the sewer rate.

This is becoming a common theme here in Auburn: tax the people that live, work and bring jobs here and penalize those who are the backbone of this town.

Instead, why aren't we looking into options that bring revenue in from the outside?

We Auburnians supply water to communities outside our city limits.

We allow others to use our landfill.

Instead of clobbering our own people with tax increases, why wouldn't the city be rewarding city residents with tax breaks?

Solvay is a great example of how to treat your own people. Their electricity is cheap, so it lures families to move there.

Why aren't we using our landfill and our water as a selling tool to bring more homeowners in?

The newest budget is calling for a trash tax. How ridiculous. We aren't stupid. We know it's just a way to open the door to more yearly increases, like the water and sewer rates.

Let's keep focused on why we're at this point: excessive pensions, mismanagement by the past city manager, horrific overtime abuses, the worst negotiated city contracts in our history, our landfill fiasco. Then our leaders killed us with oppressive assessments.

Can't we ever breathe freely without facing the never-ending financial punishments of being an Auburnian?

This idea that we're undertaxed and must catch up with other towns our size is nuts. Cayuga County is already in the top 10 of the highest taxed counties in the entire nation. Can you imagine that? That's out of thousands of counties.

And what do we get for our dollar: failing schools, high assessments and overinflated school, city and county budgets.

The only thing our politicians want to talk about is turf, the garbage tax and taking advantage of the lower and middle class families that are trying to just get by.

Ducayne's column appears

Tuesdays in The Citizen, and she can be reached at

sacredheart6005@hotmail.com